Actor. Bull-necked, gravel-voiced character actor who was one of Hollywood's favorite heavies. After several years as a bit player and a starring role on Broadway, he went west to further his career. He was soon typecast as a mobster; a bread-and-butter persona that he relished in many of his 135 films. "I was a jailbird," he said, "behind bars so often that Western Costume Company had a "Horace McMahon' tag sewn into a convict's striped suit." In 1949 he exchanged his film prison number for a badge number, returning to the stage as Lieutenant Monoghan in "Detective Story." Finding his new image as the hard-boiled cop equally remunerative, he later became the grumbling police lieutenant who ran New York's 65th precinct detective squad on the long-lived ABC series "Naked City."